Winter Weather Delays Window Cleaning

Poor weather conditions has been causing problems and really messing up my work schedule through the winter of 2015. So, if you haven’t had your windows cleaned when you expected – my apologies, but the weather really has caused a lot of problems. Not only have I not been able to do as much, but houses that I have to contact beforehand, I simply have not been able to plan as the weather has been so poor and unpredictable.

Many of our customers know that rain doesn’t normally matter much to us, window cleaning is just as possible, and as effective, in the rain as it is in on dry days. Though, as you can appreciate, heavy rain and high winds make our job unsafe.

The high winds ‘season’ started in October, and has continued though the rest of the year. As I write this on 1st January 2016, the wind is still high outside and the rain is heavy. Who know how long it is going to continue into 2016

Though October was warm, the backlash of the Atlantic hurricanes brought some days of high winds. “As we head towards the end of the month, conditions will see outbreaks of rain and stronger winds interspersed with drier, brighter periods.” (Met Office forecast in October).

November and December 2105 saw the UK and Ireland bombarded with officially named, full blown storms one after the other. Below are the storms and the dates that they ‘landed’ in the UK. Though, as we know the high rain and winds came before these dates and lingered afterwards as the storms moved on. So, it has felt like one continuous storm for November and December.

For us, we took each day as it came. Some days we couldn’t work, some days we could work part of the day, and of course the short days (dark in the mornings and dark again in the late afternoon, early evening) compounded the problems we had getting work done. It’s hard to clean windows by torch light, but we did actually finish a few jobs like this when we didn’t have any other options. It’s not our normal practice!

UK and Ireland Storm Calendar – Winter 2015

End of October

High Winds

High Winds backlash from the Atlantic Hurricanes.

12 – 13 November

Storm Abigail

Heavy rain and winds up to 145km per hour / 90 miles per hour.

17 – 18 November

Storm Barney

Many thousands of homes lost electrical power in Ireland.

29 November

Storm Clodagh

Wind gusted up to 130km per hour / 80 miles per hour and flooding all over the country.

5 – 6 December

Storm Desmond

Brought extraordinary amounts of rainfall, topping 100mm in western and southern areas of Ireland following a rare status red warning from Met Éireann. Swollen rivers and waterways spilled over leaving many homes and businesses flooded.

24 December

Storm Eva

Calmer than the last storm, but still a status orange wind warning across the west and south of the Island.

29 – 30 December

Storm Frank

With the ground already saturated across the country, the inopportune combination of strong winds, heavy rain and high tides served to exacerbate the already precarious situation. More wind damage and flooding all over the Island.

Which brings us to today (1st January), still very wet and windy and no sign of the bad weather receding at the moment.

So, it looks like our window cleaning schedule is still on ‘storm status’ i.e. we do what we can, when we can, and can’t plan much in advance at all, not even for the next day. So, apologies to our customers that need contacted beforehand, we just aren’t able to promise anything right now 🙁

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Snow Day today. Well, at least snow morning anyway. Did you know that you shouldn't wash windows in such low temperatures? It's because of 'thermal shock'. If there are any imperfections in the glass and you put hot water on freezing glass, it cracks. You don't see it as much now as we did with more single glazing. With single glazing the heat of the fire or radiator in the morning, could crack the single glazing window. Double glazing protects against that… unless hot water is put on the outside pane. Though it is all a bit more complex than that - like so much in life these days.